Holmes: Early America offers lessons for shaping Iraqi constitution

Posted: Monday, June 30, 2003

Fareed Zakaria noticed something during the turbulent 1990s: Elections weren't a cure-all for societies emerging from authoritarian rule. These societies, opined Zakaria, now the editor of Newsweek International, were apt to fall back into authoritarianism unless they developed a culture of ''constitutional liberalism'' - connoting not only free elections, but also the rule of law and protections for liberties of speech, religion, assembly and property.

Democratic majorities were capable of some frightful things. Indeed, in extreme cases, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, democracy had led to murderous ethnic strife. Zakaria feared this kind of ''illiberal democracy'' would discredit not only popular rule, but also the liberal form of democracy practiced in the West. For him, nurturing a culture of liberty was more important than foisting elections on countries that weren't ready for them.

The perils of illiberal democracy are worth revisiting as the United States sets out to craft a liberal order for post-Saddam Iraq.

Our own republic faced similar dangers in its infancy. Alexis de Tocqueville, perhaps the shrewdest observer of early America, detected a curious trait in many Americans: They favored both popular rule and the concentration of political power. While they believed ''supreme power should emanate directly from the people,'' once that power had been constituted, ''they can hardly conceive any limits to it. They freely recognize that it has the right to do everything.''

The Founding Fathers diagnosed the perils of this ''tyranny of the majority,'' as Tocqueville put it, at an early date. They derived their understanding of democracy in part from the study of ancient Greece and Rome. Despite its magnificent accomplishments, for instance, classical Athens had entrusted all power to an assembly made up of the entire citizenry. Policy and law had oscillated erratically as a result.

Mindful of the historical record, the American Founders set out to fetter the power of democratic majorities. The Founders doubted individual Americans were imbued with any special virtue. This hard-nosed view of human nature informed their deliberations over the U.S. Constitution. ''If men were angels,'' declared James Madison in The Federalist 51, ''no government would be necessary.''

''In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men,'' continued Madison, ''the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.'' How could government, which after all held a near-monopoly on the use of force, be obliged to control itself? His answer: ''Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.''

James

Holmes

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Madison prescribed two solutions to the problem of centralized power. First, political power would be scattered among the federal, state and municipal levels of government. Within each level of government, power would be further broken down into executive, legislative and judicial components, with each branch tending to restrain the others. ''Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people.''

Second, the United States was a large, diverse nation. Madison believed a unified body of public opinion would be unable to coalesce on a permanent basis, allowing the majority to tyrannize the minority. While all authority ultimately resided in society, ''the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.''

Splintered, often cross-cutting interests, then, would inhibit overbearing government, while the very structure of American government was, in the words of a 20th century analyst, ''an invitation to struggle.'' The Founders deliberately built inefficiency into the American political system to thwart the tyranny of the majority.

How will Iraq fare under a democratic constitution? At first blush the task of making ambition counteract ambition looks hopeless. Left unchecked, the majority Shiite population could simply use the ballot box to assume all power - and, in turn, take vengeance on the Sunni minority that formed Saddam's power base. But the notoriously argumentative Shiites show little sign of uniting. Insofar as we can tell, Iraqi politics will be an unruly affair.

And that's to the good.

Fareed Zakaria, Alexis de Tocqueville and James Madison would agree on a couple of principles with respect to postwar Iraq. First, the United States should be prepared to continue in its current supervisory role until a culture of constitutional liberalism blossoms. Elections should not be held prematurely. Second, power should be scattered not only among various departments of the central government, but among regional and local governments.

Let's invite the Iraqis to struggle - peacefully.

James Holmes is a senior research associate at the University of Georgia Center for International Trade and Security.